Author: Rick Christ

If you think that people online give to your organization only through your web donation form, you’re missing significant slices of the online giving pie. See the chart below to see how big those missing slices can be.

I recently studied 701 gifts that a nonprofit client received in 2010. All were made by visitors to their web site. However, less than two-thirds of those gifts (64%) actually came in via the web form.

24% of the gifts came in via the nonprofit’s PayPal account.
There are 85 million PayPal accounts in the US and they exist for only one reason – so people can spend money, online. Don’t you want to make it convenient for those active web users? They’re already comfortable with PayPal, and they can make a gift to you easily and quickly, without having to enter a credit card number online.

(I also think that people are more willing to spend money from their PayPal account than from their credit card or checking account.)

10% came in via the mail…
…on forms printed from the web site. These are people who don’t trust the web at all, or who had trouble using your web form (no web donation process works 100% of the time).

The smallest slice (two percent) came in via Amazon’s payment system.
Amazon lets nonprofits establish a vendor account, and donors can use their Amazon one-click process to make a gift to the nonprofit. Again, it’s convenient for the donor.

Figure 1: Percentage of online donations by channel

There has been a shift with this nonprofit in recent years. The mail used to account for a higher percentage, and PayPal a lower percentage. Times change, and your donors’ online donation preferences will, too.

Neither Amazon nor PayPal take a cut of the donation. That is much different than what your online credit card merchant takes, so the net to you is pretty much the same. (You need to negotiate rates based on your volume, average gift amount, and security measures).

Online check payments – those made online directly from the donor’s checking account – will increase in popularity, particularly as people seek to avoid credit card interest rates, and as such payments are more often used for online bill paying in general.

So, if you only have a web form, you might be missing more than one third of the gifts people are willing to give you.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Rick Christ has been helping nonprofit organizations use the internet for fundraising, communications and advocacy since 2009, and has been a frequent writer on the subject. He delights in your questions and arguments. Please contact him at: RChrist@Amergent.com or at his LinkedIn Page

Email is a very measurable tool, and it’s important that you measure your results so you can report on the effectiveness of your email program. In this post, I’ll suggest the most meaningful metrics for you to view your email program’s success as a whole. I like to measure this and report it on a monthly basis. In the previous post, I showed you how to examine an individual message’s results against previous emails.

Number of Subscribers: You should have a plan in place to attract new subscribers to your email messages, and so you should be building your subscriber base each month. You probably need to grow at a rate of 1% each month just to maintain the same number of subscribers, because about that percentage of readers change email addresses or unsubscribe (about 20% per year)

Delivery Rate: Most inexpensive email tools do not automatically mark an email address as “undeliverable” after a set number of bounces or failed attempts. It’s of no use to anyone to build up a file of bad email addresses. Remove undeliverable addresses from your file quarterly if you’re paying for your tool based on the number of email addresses in your file. If there are spikes in your undeliverable rate, it may represent a technical problem with the tool you are using.

Don’t believe that “Sent – Bounced = Delivered.” The “delivered” quantity in your email report is the quantity of emails that your email tool delivered to the internet service providers of your subscribers. Unlike the post office, which delivers each piece of mail to each household, no matter how irrelevant, internet service providers regularly discard many emails that they think might be spam. They don’t tell the sender, nor the intended recipient. Some internet service providers (Yahoo!, AOL, Gmail) put some email messages in a “Spam” or “Junk Mail” folder based on their content. Microsoft Outlook does that as well. Many users don’t ever look in those folders. You need to test your email using spam scoring tools to reduce the “spam score” of your emails.

Unsubscribe Rate: Generally individual email messages result in less than 1% of readers choosing to unsubscribe. Look at how your rate is fluctuating over time. If your rate is increasing, perhaps people are no longer feeling your content is relevant or interesting. Too many emails isn’t the problem; too many uninteresting emails is the problem. If all of your email messages are donation appeals, people will just delete them politely from their inbox, and after awhile they’ll decide to unsubscribe to reduce their need to delete them. You need to vary the messaging and subject lines in order to keep their interest high.

Questions about how to measure your email results? Or, how to improve your results? Ask Me.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Rick Christ has been helping nonprofit organizations use the internet for fundraising, communications and advocacy since 2009, and has been a frequent writer on the subject. He delights in your questions and arguments. Please contact him at: RChrist@Amergent.com or at his LinkedIn Page

Email is a very measurable tool, and it’s important that you measure your results so you can report on the effectiveness of your email program. In this post, I’ll suggest the most meaningful metrics for you to examine an individual message’s results against previous emails. In the next post, I’ll show you how to view your email program’s success as a whole.

Any decent email tool will provide you with more measurements than you have time to evaluate. The measurements are not consistently named or even measured across different tools, so I’m going to give you what I have found the most useful over the past 11 years.

Open Rate: The open rate of an email measures the effectiveness of the time of day and day of week that your email was sent, as well as the “From” name and email address, the subject line and sometimes the first lines of your copy. That’s all someone can see without opening your email. The open rate is calculated by the number of emails opened, divided by the number of emails that were successfully delivered (don’t count emails that bounced). Good email open rates run about 20%

Click-Through Rate: The layout and content of the email determine whether or not people will click the links in the email. Divide the number of email messages that are clicked into the number of emails that were opened to get this ratio (a good email click-through rate is 30% but varies widely depending on what you’re asking the reader to do). Don’t measure click-through based on the number of emails that are delivered. If you do, you’re taking into account all of those factors that go into determining open rate. An email with a terrible subject line but great content will look like a bad email if you base your click-through rate on the number of emails delivered. People can’t click if they don’t open the email, so only count the email messages delivered. Count only unique clicks per recipient; if someone clicks every link in your email, or clicks the same link several times, only count them once.

Completion Rate: Once people click a link in your email, presumably you want them to do something on the web page (sign a petition, make a donation, etc.). So count the number of completed donations or petition signatures as a percentage of the emails that were clicked. To do this, you probably need to create a unique landing page just for this email, so that other web traffic doesn’t distort your results. 20% completion on a donation page is about average; I’ve seen completion rates of 100% or more on a petition (respondents complete it, then get their spouses or friends to complete it too).

Example: You sent 10,000 email messages, and 9,000 were delivered, 2000 opened, and 500 of them resulted in a click to a donation page, and you got 100 donations. Your open rate is 2000/9000 or 22.2%. Your click-through rate is 500/2000 or 25%. And your completion rate is 100/500 or 20%.

Questions about how to measure using your email tool? Or, how to improve your results? Ask Me.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Rick Christ has been helping nonprofit organizations use the internet for fundraising, communications and advocacy since 2009, and has been a frequent writer on the subject. He delights in your questions and arguments. Please contact him at: RChrist@Amergent.com or at his LinkedIn Page

It wasn’t that long ago that crusty-old-direct-mail-consultants were worried that email would cut into direct mail revenue. Consistent testing and a steady stream of anecdotes indicate that’s just not true.

For the last ten years, I’ve been testing direct mail results and the impact of email messages. In one of the simplest and longest-running tests, I tested three segments of names against each other, all from the same pool of recent donors who were scheduled to receive a direct mail “house” appeal:

Group A was comprised of recent donors with email addresses who were sent an email message just before they should have received a direct mail appeal.

Group B was comprised of recent donors with email addresses, to whom we did not send the email message.

Group C was the rest of the list – recent donors for whom we had no email address on file.

The email message that was sent to the people in Group A was only a brief note saying “I have just mailed you a very important letter. It’s in a white business envelope with the words “[Insert envelope teaser copy here]” across the top. Please look for it.”

That’s it. No link to give, nothing else. (I plan to test an upgraded pre-email message with an actual photo of the outer envelope).

Group A had a direct mail response rate that was about 10% higher than Group B. No surprise. The pre-email probably resulted in more recipients somehow sorting that appeal envelope into the “open” pile rather than the “recycle” pile.

But Group B, however, had a response rate that was in turn about 10% higher than that of Group C. Why? They received the same package at the same time, and neither had the advantage of the email message. They were from the same list of recent donors. Our theory? They had been well cultivated with email newsletters for the past several months, and that increased their response to this appeal.

At a recent nonprofit conference, a major nonprofit announced similar findings: when they added email messaging to support direct mail, they got 5.7% response and a $29.25 average gift in the mail, v 3.65% and $21.12 from those who didn’t get the email — plus they got $4000 in online gifts!

Would a post-email message improve direct mail results as much, or more, than a pre-email? Would both do even better? Ah, now you’re thinking.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Rick Christ has been helping nonprofit organizations use the internet for fundraising, communications and advocacy since 2009, and has been a frequent writer on the subject. He delights in your questions and arguments. Please contact him at: RChrist@Amergent.com or at his LinkedIn Page

I received over 100 email messages from nonprofits in the last week of 2010. There’s a good reason for that: it’s the best week of the year for online fundraising.

I know, I sound like those billboards that say “You missed Ma’s Diner! Turn Back at Next Exit!” You can’t go back to December, but you can do two things:

1. Study some of the better emails that were sent then;
2. Start sending emails like that now, in January, and all year long.

Timing:
Why is the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day the best time to send an email asking for money? Most people say that it’s because you’re reminding donors that gifts made in the next few days will be deductible on their next tax return. No doubt there’s truth to that.

However, I’ve read in many places that tax savings are low on the list of reasons why people contribute to nonprofits. I think there’s another reason: Having just finished a crazy, hectic, overly-commercialized-yet-ultimately- unfulfilling few days unwrapping presents they don’t need or even want, donors yearn for more meaning. Your email can give them the opportunity to make a meaningful gift… and reap the tax deduction! If this is true, then you can make this case over and over in 2011.

In 2009, nonprofits that mailed on Monday December 28, Wednesday the 30th, and Thursday the 31st (early on that day – many people work only a half-day), raised more money than those who mailed only once or twice. This past year, the 31st was a day off for many more people (since New Year’s Day was a Saturday), so the best days seemed to be Monday and Thursday.

The message:
Shorter even than usual is the rule; Instead of a lengthy look backwards in the prior year, you might offer opportunities in the coming year, achievable if enough funds are raised. People will support your solutions to the problems they want solved.

It’s OK to send the same message several times in a row, especially to those who didn’t open the previous one. Use a different subject line and keep sending email.

Need help with your email schedule and appeals? Contact me.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Rick Christ has been helping nonprofit organizations use the internet for fundraising, communications and advocacy since 2009, and has been a frequent writer on the subject. He delights in your questions and arguments. Please contact him at: RChrist@Amergent.com or at his LinkedIn Page

The web may be the most powerful broadcast tool of all time, but too many nonprofit organizations miss the even more important power of the web – a way to listen to their donors!

Why is listening so important?

• People like to be listened to…. So few people
  really listen these days – most just use the time others are talking to prepare
  their own next statement – and donors love to be asked their opinion. They’re
  passionate about your cause.
• When they have a problem with your organization, giving them an ear is the
  best way to keep them as a donor – and to fix a problem that’s probably
  driving other donors away too. Which would you rather they talked to –
  you, or their friends on FaceBook (or at the supermarket)?
• Using the words they use is the most powerful way to communicate to them
  in the future. Using their vocabulary always generates more response than
  using the language of your board or staff. Good copywriters yearn for donor
  correspondence.

How you can listen online easily and cheaply:

• Share your email from donors within the organization and with your
  fundraising counsel (minus the personal information)
• Actively solicit input in online and email surveys using open-ended questions
  like, “Why do you support us?” or “What do you think the biggest problem is
  concerning [your top issue]?” and “What do you think we (the donor and the
  organization) should do about it?”
• Look at your web site traffic statistics (Google Analytics, WebTrends, etc.)
  and see what words and phrases people are putting into search engines that
  end up at your site. What pages are they viewing most often? If you have a
  site search, look at those results too.
• Build a basic FaceBook fan page and invite people to comment. Thank each
  of them and share the significant comments internally.
• Use Twitter #hashtags and Google Alerts to track what people are saying
  about your organization and about your issues.

Need help implementing any of these ideas? Contact me.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Rick Christ has been helping nonprofit organizations use the internet for fundraising, communications and advocacy since 2009, and has been a frequent writer on the subject. He delights in your questions and arguments. Please contact him at: RChrist@Amergent.com or at his LinkedIn Page

People may not judge books by their covers, but they certainly judge your email before they open it.

If your email message has an uninspiring subject line, it will never get opened. Go into your “deleted items” folder in your email program, and scan the emails that you never opened. Odds are, none of those subject lines appealed to you.

What makes a good subject line? It needs to entice the reader into opening the message. That’s all. Think of a great “teaser” line on an outer envelope you mail to your donors. It provokes the reader through emotion or humor to see what’s inside.

•   Really bad subject lines ensure that your email message doesn’t even get into the readers’ inbox, but instead goes straight to the “spam” folder. Avoid all caps and more than one punctuation mark.

•   Don’t give away the story in the subject line. Hint at what’s inside, but make them open it to find out.

•   A good headline might read like a newspaper story headline. “Seniors may get no Social Security COLA next year” will interest seniors and make them want to see what’s inside. “Seniors will get no Social Security COLA next year,” tells them what’s in the article, and eliminates the need for them to open it.

•   It needs to be concise. The first 30 characters need to convince them to at least read the rest of the subject line.

•   “Video: 4 ways to save the planet” will not only get more people to open the email, but more of them will click the video link inside. The same is true for “Survey:” and other calls for their involvement.

Network for Good recently published a great guide for subject line writers (and tweeters) called Big Impact in Small Places that I recommend for all involved in this process.

Tell us your best and worst subject lines, and ask us your additional email fundraising questions!

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Rick Christ has been helping nonprofit organizations use the internet for fundraising, communications and advocacy since 2009, and has been a frequent writer on the subject. He delights in your questions and arguments. Please contact him at: RChrist@Amergent.com or at his LinkedIn Page

Never take anyone’s advice on how to run an email campaign (except this advice from me)!

Instead, take the good ideas you hear from others and test them within your campaign. Testing online is similar to testing in direct mail (or with your favorite recipe, for that matter).

Test one subject line against another, or one landing page against another. Start with your favorite (or the one the boss likes most) or the one that did the best last time. That’s your “control.” Then find one variable that might improve results, and that new message is your “test.”

Easier said than done, you say? True. Most basic email tools do not have sophisticated testing capabilities. However, you can get some pretty reliable results with a few tricks.

If your list is less than 10,000 email addresses, the best you can do is to split the list into two groups and send one of the halves the test email and the other the control.

If the list is larger, you can create two test groups of 5,000 email addresses each – one for the control, and the other for the test. Within 24 hours, you should know which list did best, and send that message to the rest of the list.

How do you create valid test segments? The only one sure data element you have for each address is the email address itself. Most email tools will let you create a segment of a list based on the content of the email address.

So, if you create a segment that includes every email address with an ‘s’ or ‘t’ or ‘k’ in it, you might end up with 5,000 names. Avoid using a, o, l, c, o, and m, or else you’ll get every AOL.Com address in one segment or the other. That’s never a good idea, since AOL subscribers might very well perform, as a group, differently than others. For the same reason, avoid ‘y’ (Yahoo!) and ‘g’ (Gmail) as well as any other letters that might skew your results.

Now you can test different subject lines, long copy against short copy, different designs, anything – and get pretty valid results.

How do you test landing pages? Send the exact same email message to both groups, but in one message, change the link so it goes to the test landing page.

As an added way of ensuring valid results, and to maximize your overall response, see if you can swap the segments: mail message B to those on list A who didn’t respond, and message A to those on list B who didn’t respond. If your lists are equal, whatever message did the best last time should do better this time. And, you’ll gain more responses from people who didn’t see or respond to the message the first time.

Do your test, tell us your results, and ask us your additional testing questions!

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
We’re taking a break until after the New Year.
Be back on January 4, 2011

Best wishes to you and yours from Hank,
Natalie, Andrew & Rick. ☺

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Rick Christ has been helping nonprofit organizations use the internet for fundraising, communications and advocacy since 2009, and has been a frequent writer on the subject. He delights in your questions and arguments. Please contact him at: RChrist@Amergent.com or at his LinkedIn Page

(First in a series on Fundraising & Social Media)

There’s no such a thing as an “email fundraising campaign.”

“Wait,” you say. You’ve heard of lots of nonprofits that are raising money with email. “How can there be no such thing…?”

That’s because a typical email just doesn’t have the technical power to get the reader’s attention, generate continued interest, create the desire, and capture an action.

At the very least, you need a landing page to “close the deal,” an email message to send to those who’ve taken the action you requested, and a follow-up page to send them to. It’s usually a lot more complicated than that.

So, email is often the beginning of an online fundraising campaign. It’s the honey you cast upon a few thousand flowers (depending on how many email addresses you have) that entice them to come to your web site.

Here’s a checklist of some of the key elements in an online campaign:

•    The Subject Line – Goal: to get the email opened. Hint: think in terms of a
     good outer envelope teaser line. Don’t give away the contents of the message.
•    The “From” Name – Goal: to build recognition and help with email opening.
     Hint: Test the signer’s name against the organization or campaign name.
•    The Email Message – Goal: to generate a click to the website. Hint: email
     messages are scanned, not read. Use bullet points, relevant images (linked to
     the landing page) and make sure a text link or button is always visible
     no matter how the reader scrolls
•    The Landing Page – Goal: to “close the sale.” Hint: Give them enough additional
     information (or, better yet, emotion) to convince them to act, then take away all
     of the obstacles to successful action (e.g. unnecessary additional clicks,
     distracting links to other pages, irrelevant questions)
•    The Thank-You Page – Goal: to immediately broaden and/or deepen the
     relationship with this supporter. Hint: Here’s a good place for a survey, or a link
     to a longer video. They want to know they made a smart move on the
     previous page, so give them a chance to get to know you better.
•    The Thank-You Email – Goal: exactly the same as the thank-you page.
     Hint: If your automatic thank-you email is more like a receipt, send a second email
     a few days later, with warmer copy and more links.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Rick Christ has been helping nonprofit organizations use the internet for fundraising, communications and advocacy since 2009, and has been a frequent writer on the subject. He delights in your questions and arguments. Please contact him at: RChrist@Amergent.com or at his LinkedIn Page